Shadowlands Paladin Feedback (Non-tester)

I have not had the pleasure of experiencing the Shadowlands Alpha, but have been keeping close tabs on the changes to my main class, the Paladin. Because of this I can’t post in the Shadowlands subforum, but hopefully my critique and praise of Paladin’s balance in Shadowlands will be welcome here. I play all three specs, and after having seen a lot of the changes I find them both refreshing and concerning. Below is a shorthand list of the abilities I’m concerned about that need to be addressed as well as an assigned priority. Please read further for more details.

Ability (Spec) [Priority]
Wake of Ashes (Ret) [High]
Blessing of Kings/Wisdom (Ret) [Medium]
Hammer of Reckoning (Ret) [Low]
Justicar’s Vengeance (Ret) [Medium]
Healing Hands (Ret) [Medium]
Infusion of Light (Holy) [High]
Light of Dawn (Holy) [High]
Judgement (Holy) [High]
Retribution Aura (All) [High]
Hammer of Wrath (All) [Low]
Word of Glory (All) [Medium]

Wake of Ashes (Retribution). Lash out at your enemies, dealing (OLD: 210%) 315% of Attack power Radiant damage to all enemies within 12 yd in front of you and reducing their movement speed by 50% for 5 sec. Damage reduced on secondary targets. Demon and Undead enemies are also stunned for 5 sec. Generates (OLD: 5) 3 Holy Power.

If this can’t be used to instantly get full holy power, Retribution is going to feel MUCH slower, and their ability to fight through their Global Cooldowns is going to be painfully sluggish. If buffs like Inquisition, Seraphim and Avenging Wrath, etc. are going to each take an entire GCD to put up, Wake of Ashes giving 5 Holy Power is necessary to fill the gaps in HP generation. Especially with all these new Holy Power outlets, we need the ability to get holy power, not have it nerfed.

Suggestion: Revert changes back to gaining 5 Holy Power upon use.

Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Wisdom (Retribution) is pruned?! I thought this was supposed to be a period of unpruning? Give back Blessing of Kings and Wisdom— taking away out ability to support the team with buffs and not replacing it with anything is ridiculous. It’s a fun little thing to keep up, and if you take this away then I assume you’re taking away the PVP Talent Hammer of Reckoning? This was such a neat interaction with the blessings, and forced you to choose targets you thought would be focused to maybe get you an extra burst of wings.

Suggestion: Don’t get rid of the Blessings, and consider keeping Hammer of Reckoning.

Justicar’s Vengeance (Retribution). Why is this still such a trap talent? It costs FIVE (5) Holy Power to use— Wake of Ashes doesn’t even give 5 Holy Power anymore— And it only deals 150-200% Attack Power in Holy Damage? Templars Verdict already deals 200% damage but only costs 3 Holy Power. Why ever choose this talent over Selfless Healer, which doesn’t hamper your damage dealing resource?

Suggestion: Buff Justicar’s Vengeance to 200% Attack Power in Holy Damage as a baseline, and a bonus 50% when the target is stunned. This will bring it up to par with Templar’s Verdict, while not making it out DPS Templar’s Verdict. 1.66 Templar’s Verdicts hit for 333% damage, while 1 Justicar’s Vengeance would only hit for 250%. Using Justicar’s Vengeance with this tuning would be 25% less damage than a Templar’s Verdict, or even 40% less damage when not using a stun.

Healing Hands (Retribution). This seems like a dead talent. Sure the CDR is nice, but why choose this over Selfless Healer? I think keeping Lay on Hands at a super high cooldown and adding this as an option to access it more is a good idea, but needs more oomph to make this talent desirable.

Suggestion: When you Lay on Hands an ally at less than 30% health, the cooldown of Lay on Hands is reduced by 50%. Using your next Lay on Hands on the same target under 30% health reduces its cooldown by 75%.

Infusion of Light (Holy). Your critical Holy Shocks reduce the cast time of your next (OLD: Holy Light by 1.5) Flash of Light by 30% sec or increase the healing of your next (OLD: Flash of Light by 40%). Holy Light by 30%.

Suggestion: Flip this back to how it was. It feels good to make the decision to either get faster casts of Holy Light for a quick, mana efficient heal, or make the decision to get a stronger, less efficient Flash of Light.

Light of Dawn (Holy). Costing Holy Power? No! No?! This spell is not powerful enough to justify using holy power on it.

Suggestion: Change this back to a mana based ability OR make it’s range and potency increase with the amount of holy power spent.

Judgement (Holy). Why does judgement not give holy power on use? If word of dawn now costs holy power, and holy power is the crux mechanic of this spec, allow Paladins to generate holy power off judgement too, and scale it’s CD from there. Don’t take away an entire HP generator.

Suggestion: Make judgement give 1 Holy Power on use.

Retribution Aura (All). Change this. Anything but this mechanic. Bring back damage on hit, or a version of this that affects the entire party. The way this is, is an extremely selfish aura, and I would argue that it puts Paladins in a weird decision making spot of helping or letting nonessential allies die for DPS burst.

Suggestion: Retribution Aura, “All party members within 40 yards that take damage in combat are granted 1% haste, stacking to 5%.” Aura Mastery increases haste to 8-10%.

Hammer of Wrath (All) may be used on any target during Avenging Wrath. Strikes an enemy for (120% of Attack power) Holy damage. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health. Generates 1 Holy Power.

Suggestion: I’d say tune the damage on this up just a little higher to 150%. We can all agree this ability was limp in BFA, hitting as hard as a normal judgement, or even lesser if you had azerite traits for judgement. 120% is a step in the right direction.

Word of Glory (All). Why isn’t there a talent or an option to make this splash heal? Give some kind of option to make this splash heal. At 3 Holy Power, this doesn’t heal enough.

Suggestion: Make this scale with the amount of holy power spent, where 3 holy power spent is single target, but 5 splashes multitarget.


Overall, I really like the changes brought to every spec’s talent tree. I won’t go into detail, but it seems like all the choices have been cleaned up to be a lot more competitive with one another. Holy Paladins using Holy Power is interesting, and will make it much more dynamic to play. However, Holy will need some of the above tuning to feel smoother. Protection Paladins have MUCH more interesting talents to choose from. Retribution Paladins needs some tweaks in regards to their off-healing. Resource generation across the board needs to be tuned with my above listed issues as well, but otherwise the talent trees looks interesting, and I’m looking forward to smiting horde scum in the Shadowlands. Hopefully I get in on the next wave of testing so I can get a feel for myself.

8 Likes

Nice feedback I agree with everything! I’m not too concerned about the blessings because as they are now I’m pretty bored with them. But id prefer they revamp them rather than just get rid of them.

I really think they still need to add something to the rotation to make it a little more fluid.

I gotta say I’ve fallen in love with paladin again recently.

3 Likes

Yeah as it is now in BFA, everything feels fine. But when they nerf Wake of Ashe’s holy power generation to just 3 Holy Power, you’re really going to feel like something is missing.

3 Likes

I have no problem with Wake of Ashes only generating 3 HP. Right now it feels bad using it at 1-2 HP because you know you wasted some. It won’t really slow down the rotation either because of the CD. It’s not like it’s spammable.

1 Like

As it stands right now, if you are using all your abilities (Judgement, crusader’s strike, blade of justice) on cooldown and pump all of that holy power into Inquisition and Templar’s Verdict— you eventually hit a deadzone where you can’t use any Holy Power generators and awkwardly stand there during longer fights. Wake of Ashes fills one of these global timers with a burst of holy power that you can use to keep DPS up and follow up with more TVs and one more generator to refresh Inquisition.

You notice it on extended fights. But also, having Wake of Ashes give 5 HP allows you to open up fights with a WoA > Inquisition > Generator > TV. Whereas with only 3 HP, it is much slower to open up on a target: WoA > Inquisition > Generator > Generator > Generator > TV. You’ll especially feel it with a much slower DPS Burst in PVP.

Also it’s important to keep in mind, we’re getting Word of Glory and Shield of the Righteous as HP sinks. So in theory you’re going to want to have more HP available, no?

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Yeah, but how often does that happen at exactly 0 HP vs when you already have 1 or 2?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of more HP and would have no problem with Wake staying at 5. I just don’t think it’s going to be terrible at 3 either.

1 Like

I agree on the Ret suggestions. I don’t play Prot and Holy enough to really comment.

I think having Divine Toll will really help if a Pally goes Kyrian, HOWEVER, if they go to just about any other covenant, the lack of a 5 HP Wake of Ashes is going to sting.
I haven’t seen enough of the alpha to see the cooldowns on all generators (outside of Hammer of Wrath as it is an execute or wings only thing anyway). If they are setup such that we have a smooth rotation even at 0% haste, then having a 3 HP wake of ashes is fine. If that is still NOT the case — then a 5 HP wake of ashes is a MUST.

I’m okay with removing Wisdom and Kings for now.
I want to see them re-work Hammer of Reckoning and Vengeance Aura.

I also want them to completely remove Retribution Aura as it currently works. Bring back the old one that was more like a holy damage version of Thorns in its place.
No more of that ghastly and toxic mechanic of WANTING a teammate to bite it just so that we can get a DPS boost.

4 Likes

Wake of Ashes going baseline is a good move. However I’m not convinced about it generating only 3 HoPo. Early on in the expansion (as ret traditionally scales better towards the end of expansions) we’re going to feel the loss.

Justicar’s Vengance. I used to love this talent in Legion. The change to it during the BfA beta hurt. I’m not so worried about the damage, but I think for that much holy power it needs to heal a minimum guranteed amount.

Kings we’re going to feel a lot more squishy without it. Sure its a minor absorb, but it adds up over time. Wisdom that hurts. True they were largely cast and forget, barring if the healer you had Wisdom on dropped, and you swapped it to another, but yeah… not sure what the reasoning is behind taking it away.

Healing Hands…that needs to go away. I actually like BfA’s version of WoG. Getting a crit on a well timed WoG has saved many a dungeon run. Why they made it single target only, is beyond me.

I feel like we’re being shoe horned back into a situation of why take ret, when a Holy or Protection can do the same and fill a much more desirable niche.

I still think we need Divine Purpose or Empyrean Power baseline for a little added spice.

As it stands I think we’re looking at a potential where we might be starved for Holy Power.

It could be possible that soulbinds will shore up some of these issues, but given Blizzard’s track record with ret I’m not holding my breath.

2 Likes

For blessings it would be nice to see them returned in a similar or even altered version of what they once were. I would like to see something similar to what I’ve come up below.

Kings: Increases total stats by 10% (or 5% if you argue 10% is too strong)
Might: Increases Attack Power and/or Spell Power by 10% (or 5% if you argue 10% is too strong)
Wisdom: Regenerate max health and mana by 1% every 10 seconds.
Light: Target takes 5% more healing from all sources.
Salvation: Target takes 3% less damage from spells and gains an absorb shield when taking spell damage. Cannot occur more then once every 15 seconds. (Similar absorb values to what Blessing of Kings is like in BFA now).

3 Likes

Same. I get that they want to watch how much damage it does in PvP…but they could just scale that separately. THey’ve shown they can do it before.
Doing it on its PvE template just makes it unusable.
Otherwise during Legion that was a nice go to talent.

Same, I liked the BFA version. If they felt it healed too much they could scale it back. But from what I’ve seen so far, the single target and amount it was scaled back seems too far.

The only reason I don’t want either baseline is that I don’t want either to be necessary for a smooth rotation, nor for our BASELINE damage (without talents) to be tuned around too much RNG.

Possible. Need to see the cooldown timers on abilities!

I would rather these issues just be handled at the baseline level (without talents or gear), and then let gear, soulbinds, talents, etc. specialize and flavor up the class from there.

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I see the 3 hp WoA as an improvement. It makes it more flexible to use.

The problem is that empyrion power and divine purpose are both required right now for a smoother rotation. Them not being baseline just makes me feel like I need to pick them to have fun. Which I do, I am having fun but I would like to have fun and have the largest dps output I can

2 Likes

Empyrean Power or Divine Purpose. They really need to pick one or the other and make it baseline. One or the other really needs to be baseline. Talents should be things that enhance a spec, not things that are required to make it playable at all.

7 Likes

I disagree. Procs do the opposite of making a rotation feel smooth; they make it clunky.

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Care to elaborate?

Huh? No. 60% of resources is not “more flexible” - it’s not like we get punished for going over HP cap anyhow. It’s a straight up nerf. Having MORE resources generated makes us more flexible, not less.

3 Likes

Flow means you have a smooth transition from one step to the next. When you get a proc this smooth transition is interrupted by a randomly occurring event.

Rotations with procs are the antithesis of Flow or smooth rotations.

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WoA comes off CD but you have two HP you can’t WoA you have to delay it. You have to use CS, BoJ, judge first then DS/TV. If you use BoJ you also just wasted a holy power or if lucid dreams procs you have to generate and spend more HP while holding on to WoA.

You can cast WoA(BFA) when you have 0,1 HP.

You can cast WoA(SL) when you have 0,1,2 HP.

Therefore more flexiable. It is a buff not a nerf. If you are worried about damage the damage balance pass happens after class changes.

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What no. Still. You have to generate that lost HP somewhere else in the rotation.

Going from 100% of something to 60% of something does not make it more flexible. It makes it less flexible.

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That would be true if ret had a smooth rotation…but we are far from that. Unless you call frequent downtimes “smooth”. I wouldn’t.
Sure, with all the borrowed power we have now the rotation is somewhat ok. However, this will be gone come SL.

1 Like