SoD Retribution Paladin - Wild Strikes bugged, threat generation too high, mana issues

Hello everyone, thank you dearly for taking the time to read this post.

I will make this as brief as possible. As a disclaimer, before I continue this post, I just want to say that I am very thankful for everything that Blizzard has done for Paladins in Season of Discovery to make them an actually viable DPS class.

Windfury / Wild Strikes:
In Vanilla WoW / Classic Era, Windfury or Wild Strikes is supposed to be able to proc from any attack, white hit or yellow hit, regular or special attack. For example, Warrior can proc Wild Strikes on everything from Sunder Armor, to Raging Blow, even Hamstring. However, currently in Season of Discovery, we have confirmed that we are currently unable to proc Wild Strikes from a number of special abilities, namely Crusader Strike and Divine Storm, and potentially Judgement of Command / Martyr as well (we are unsure of this one because of how it is coded).

However, this is not simply a Paladin issue:
(See: there is currently a post below this one referencing the same issue but for Feral Druids, I suggest that every class check all their special attacks and see if they are encountering this same issue).

This issue results in much less satisfying gameplay and causes us to have drastically less Wild Strikes procs.

This can be remedied with very straightforward adjustments. Now, I believe it is Blizzard’s wish that these special attacks do not proc seals for Paladin, which is how they currently work in SoD. It is possible to fix these special attacks to proc Wild Strikes without making them proc seals, so it is seemingly not a limitation of the game engine. I believe it can be remedied with the following things:

First of all, ALL seals should only EVER proc from auto attacks / white hits (auto / wild strikes / etc).
For reference, such as in TBC where CS did not proc seals

Secondly, Wild Strikes should actually always proc on ALL special attacks, as this is how Windfury Totem has always worked and is designed to work.

Lastly, Seal of Command should have the same function as Maul or Heroic Strike that allows them to operate as auto attacks despite being yellow hits, if there is ever any intention of implementing seal twisting in the same style as TBC, so that a successful twist would give 2x Martyrdom hits (one from Auto, one from Command), otherwise it will only give 1x Martyrdom hits.

This will solve the issue entirely, allowing Wild Strikes / Windfury to proc on all specials, and removing any issues with Seals occuring after special attacks; and the last part would allow the potential for seal twisting to be added at some point in the future if Blizzard wishes in the same style as TBC.

Threat:
In Season of Discovery we currently have no way to reduce our threat generation, and we are generating more threat than I think we are intended to for a few reasons:
In TBC we were given a talent, Fanaticism, that gave us a threat reduction modifier of 30%, which is not currently implemented in SoD. We also do not yet have Blessing of Salvation, which will help to a degree. Crusader Strike was given a mana generation component in SoD that is causing a lot of extra threat on every CS cast, it is unsustainable and will cause massive threat issues as we level up. Similarly, Divine Storm healing component is also generating a lot of extra threat. I have not tested Seal of Martyrdom yet, but I believe the mana generation of that seal may also be generating extra threat (though nobody uses it as it is flatly a LOT worse than Divine Storm). I believe these health and mana generation effects should not generate threat. Even though we are around the middle of the DPS meter, we are consistently generating extremely high threat.

Mana:
Finally, while I have you all here, not a bug per se, but a huge issue: our mana pool situation is quite rough, and we do not have wisdom Judge yet, which will help a little. If you use all of your Retribution abilities on cooldown you go out of mana in about 1 minute. This is a big problem on longer fights like Akum’ai. Martyrdom mana return is just not sufficient and nobody wants to take a 30% DPS loss for it anyway.

Thank you again for reading this bug report, and I welcome any feedback you may have regarding these issues.

21 Likes

Hopefully with some light you have shed on this we can get the ball rolling on fixing the issue =/

1 Like

Needs to be fixed. Good post.

3 Likes

Its funny that ferals that provide it are also bugged.gg

2 Likes

bump

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fix now pls

3 Likes

Give me twisting aggrend if i wanted to press CS/DS when they come off CD and turn my brain off i wouldnt have quit wrath a month in

5 Likes

Good post hopfully they fix

Leave out seal twisting. It’s better to have active abilities to press than watching a swing timer to press a seal at the last 0.4 second to hope you proc command+SOR. Give rets engaging gameplay not staring at a swing timer bar.

1 Like

Manage your threat, and you’ll probably resolve your mana issue. Also, don’t igbire INT. This isn’t Wrath or Retail.

Says the rogue

Don’t ignore int so you can gain more mana from CS and gain even more threat (from mana restore) with even less damage!

At this rate I’m not holding out hope. between being behind all other melee/physical dps, we also are hard capped due to threat by a ridiculous margin. Unless Ret tanking is viable in later phases (or ret dps & threat is fixed) I think I might just play my feral druid…

1 Like

Seal twisting is pressing active abilities, you are bad and also wrong.

3 Likes

Concur with OP. This is a great post and frankly needs more attention brought to it - not just for paladin sake but for all classes with impacted abilities

3 Likes

@Blizz plz fix, not working like WF totem as intended.
Good post OP

2 Likes

Good post. Please fix Blizz.

3 Likes

Agree with OP - thanks for shedding some light on this Surv

2 Likes

The charts keep coming out, and paladin keeps sinking lower. With the massive damage reductions already done for BG pvp, the fear of Paladin burst is unfounded. Blizz, ya’ll said the goal was to shake the meta. Not only is the meta still firmly in place, but it has unfairly been forced by excluding abilities that SHOULD proc certain things from doing so, while allowing other similar abilities to continue to proc. This is not only a failure to meet the goal, but also an outright unfair situation. Surely there’s a way, if you want to start small, to allow Wild Strikes to proc off our specials without triggering seals. And if not, well, surely allowing it wouldn’t increase our DPS by 50% or more. We’re that far behind warrior already, and they will scale IMMENSELY at higher level.

1 Like

Bump. Wild Strike interaction is surely unintended/bugged. Need to at least proc off crusader strike at a bare minimum.

1 Like

I agree with OP.

1 Like