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.