War Within Ret talent update april 17th

Classes Paladin
1

Exciting news today.

There are nice things going in these changes and some that brings questions.

With the removal of the crit part of Abjudication I think we can now all safely assume the class tree is getting a look over.

Edit:
Just looked at the class tree and indeed HoW no longuer has 100% crit.
Nice to see.

  1. Ret scaling issues

Although I’m not a fan of RNG damage, the mastery changes are adding some scaling back into our kit.
Also important to mention that a % chance to do a “bit” more damage on judgement cast only is a really small addition but they added some other interaction with other talent so that’s what it is.
It’s reminiscent of the first DF tree where we had a talent that gave Judgement a 25% chance to chain.
(I much prefer to have a Judgement to 100% chain at 25% damage than the other way around personnaly.
I mean, they made Blessed champion afterward…)

We also have parts of our damage that were tied to “100% crit” reworked which makes them scale with crit once again while other abilties and mechanic gained scaling such as

  • Abjudication (now works with mastery)
  • Templar Strike (now scales with penitance and crit)
  • Wake of Ashe now has additional crit scaling which should offset it not scaling with haste at all.
  • AoW crit scaling

Although it is unfortunate to see its upfront damage nerfed, Im all for it it allows us to get stronger trough our stats and gear rather than artificial tuning bumbs.

  1. Holystrike VS Radiant
    Some of those change seems to allow a better balance between those 2 build.

Templar strike being made better is a consistent radiant damage source that allows SL to trigger on ST.
Furthermore, the mastery judgment can trigger SL which is a boon.

On the other side, they removed the line on DA saying that CASTING holystrike abilities grants a stack and is now simply “Holystrike damage” which opens the door for it to work with Blessed Champion and therefor make DA much more potent on cleave/AoE.

Question:
If Blade of light is selected with Templar Strike, does the DoT become Holystrike?
And if so does the dot generate DA stack? and does the DoT work with Blessed Champion?

Side note
The large gap in performance between AoE and ST build for the profile at which they DON’T excel is further reduce by the nerfs to ES and FR.
Those 2 talent will still increase the damage of both build significantly but it’s now less of a swing.

This combined with the additional scaling and mastery buff, I’m optimistic about build diversity in TWW.

  1. “It Need more” changes
  • Highlord judgement is interesting be were already saturated with judgement debuff I don’t know that we use spender enough in a row to warrant picking that.
  • Divine hammer is kind of a curve ball, it wasn’t taken but it had more to do with how seemless its node companion was. Testing is needed because the interaction seems weird but I’m ready to give that a try.
  • Righteous Cause is still mostly useless and ST focused only.

4- Disappointment/Concerns

  • VoJ is still there…
  • We are now heavily incentivized to specialize into a specific damage type with the hero talents.
    On the other hand, the idea behind the damage type feels much more fleshed out.
    Still on the fence on this.
  • We can still get all 3 capstone in the class tree
  • Class tree still has useless node such as Strength in conviction, Faith armor, Incandescence and Touch of light
2 Likes
2

your making quite a few assumptions. but yes alot of these are upfront boons to the spec as a whole

the only negative aspect for me is new divine hammer. generators should not be strogner than spenders and this talent makes you generator spam and spend at 5 hopo for maximum value every 2 mins. which means crusade gains more value i nthe worst ways

3

This is my biggest worry.

Searing Light and Burn to Ash have cool synergy with Dawnlight (Sunspots), Expurgation, and Templar Slash, but could be leaning too hard into making these default choices.

Honestly, I think simply changing these spec talents to be “Holyfire” might be a better solution than continuing down this Radiant path. Wouldn’t have much of an impact to how they function, but could be an interesting way to separate the Hero Trees a bit better.

1 Like
4

What is I wanna know is if greater judgement has no cap in its stacks to avoid wasting judgment. New tooltip says it can stack now

5

“multiple application may overlap” yup

Are we gonna be able to use them all? :rofl:

6

It probably just stacks charges on the Judgement debuff, so say you are running the Double Judgement Talent, and hit Divine Toll, casting 3 Judgements in a row, your next 3 HP spenders will do 20% increased damage.

Highlord’s Judgement seems a bit overtuned for a talent, I’d expect that Greater Judgement to be cut or added to another talent. >.>

7

Right, I’m wondering what’s the cap, since now it depends how many points in HJ you have.

8

My concern is with Divine Hammer getting a major redesign, it will essentially delete Consecrated Blade as a choice (due to it being passive node competing with an active ability).

Consecration hasn’t fit with Ret’s kit since WoD, and Consecrated Blade should be made baseline for Ret to solve this issue. Plus, nobody takes the AoE slow talents anyways, so the change will be a simple QoL update more than anything.

9

Vanguard of Justice has been redesigned – Templar’s Verdict and Divine Storm cost 1 additional Holy Power and deal 20% increased damage.

How is this a redesign? It basically does the same it did before, except it mentions Templar’s Verdict and DS. - Just delete this please, 4hp gameplay sucks.
Does it exclude Final Verdict(maybe moved on another spot or as an option against this? lol) and Justicar’s Vengeance on purpose?

2 Likes
10

Our initial goal is to explore how we can make secondary stats more appealing to Retribution, to allow a natural progression of scaling throughout an expansion.

One of the sources of frustration we’ve seen when it comes to the Retribution spec tree is that there is a large amount of friction between Single Target and AoE builds

Very glad to see this explicitly acknowledge and stated.
I feel like the changes made mark a good step toward natural growth through items for the spec.

Indeed, I don’t get it either…
Tooltip on WoWhead seems to say it affects JV and FV too.

Depends on how strong it is but as it stand it doesn’t have a duration.
Which means it’s either missing from tooltip or you can maintain it indefinitely as long as you have HP for it to spend.
Which could be big but I don’t think we should discount something passive still being taken.
Divine Hammer introduce a resource management component that is reminiscent of Breath of Sindragosa for DK.
Basically you’ll always want to spend at 4 (without VoJ) to make sure it keeps going.

Very difficult to say either way if it’s good or not without playing with it.

That’s because it shouldn’t be in the Ret tree.
The class tree already has very few choice yet this node appears in both Prot and Ret tree instead of class tree.

There are spot in there that this ability can easily replace provided they also make some change so that we can’t take all capstones.

11

I think this was a tooltip update, as it technically should increase the HP cost and damage of SotR, but currently doesn’t on live.

While I think these are a step in the right direction, I feel like it’s creating a weird situation with our talent choices.

Obviously testing might prove it completely different, but imo, it’s beginning to feel like certain talents are going to feel “mandatory” just for our stats too feel good?

Like for example:

  • Judgement and Hammer of Wrath will just feel like crap button presses unless you take 2/2 Highlords.
    • Mastery doesn’t feel good, unless you take these talents.
  • Art of War vs Righteous Cause
    • If you want Crit to “feel good” you “need” to go Art of War, removing the choice

Most classes have 8-11 talents in Gate 1 of their talent tree, where 6-7 are “mandatory” for that baseline feel (BoJ, DS, Art of War, etc…) and I’d be interested in knowing if these 8-11 talents need to change?

What are the 6-7 talents that feel mandatory for the spec? What are 4-5 that could be optional?

Cause I’m not sure if Expurgation, Final Verdict, Judgment of Justice, or Swift Justice and Light of Justice should be in that first gate anymore…

2 Likes
12

Well, yes and no, with highlord’s wrath giving you 2 judgement debuff, and I believe hammer of wrath can also apply it? So you can get up to 12 judgement debuff. They each have their own 20sec duration, so that means you will continue to use only one per spender but you won’t override them that much.

13

I was jesting.
The answer is no, at least for the moment.

UNLESS the new Divine Hammer uses the stack since it’s now technically a spender.
Which would be an interesting interaction, gosh I wish I could try the Alpha XD.

Or we get a divine purpose change to make it have a better proc than it has now, Idk.
Anyway, stacking judgement is good QoL, its just a bit of a design problem if the stack consistently just go up.

14

All very good changes imo. I’d like to see them change highlord’s judgment to have an aoe component to go with the single target blast.

Otherwise I’m very pleased, nice change of pace tbh.

2 Likes
15

Stacking it is cool, but I think it’s becoming more and more apparent that Divine Toll and maybe the Mastery needs a bit of a redesign and not tack everything onto Judgement. =/

ES, Divine Hammers, Divine Resonance, Mastery Procs, Empyrean Hammer Procs, WoA (+Searing Light procs), and Hammer of Light…

I got sensory overload just from watching a few videos. I was on discord with a buddy and his comment was just “wtf is even happening???” lol

2 Likes
16

How do you all reckon Divine Hammer plays out? It seems like an incarnation of Zealotry

17

I like the concept of Divine Hammer, but I think this is a spell best suited for the “Hammerbro” Hero Talent.

Personally, I don’t enjoy the Paladin Builders, I think they have no identity anymore and they’ve all just became copies of one another. (just with different ranges)

This ability highlights that problem, but for the general population, that will be ignored because ability go burrrrrr. =/

1 Like
18

Considering the effect of Shake the heaven + Higher Calling, this will definitely be taken in concert with it.
If it also counts as a spender for the purpose Hammerfall then it will be a “giga” CD to use.

The HoL stack will go up real fast

19

Yeah, and I think that just snowballs the problem. =/

Divine Hammers would be best as the Capstone for Templar, as these will most likely be taken together, and this would allow it to be tuned appropriately so.

However, putting Divine Hammers as the Capstone for Templar, just resolidifies the fact that Templar is better renamed “Hammerbro.”

Not trying to be overly negative, but I don’t really like much of the changes to Ret. =/

Edit:

A lot of players wanted the skillcap to be raised on Paladins, and this feels like the opposite. Hit 3 buttons, then roll face on keyboard.

Hopefully the NPC, Champion Faesrol, gets promoted from the Argent Tournament and we see him as a Templar in TWW. :joy:

20

It’s just feel like we’re creeping back to stacking CD like with seraphim.

What is the opener gonna be like?

BoJ-Judge-Wings-Divine hammer (-1HP)-Wake-FR-HoL-Divine Toll and THEN finally we get into the rotation.

Really does feel like a hammer “machine gun” picking up speed before spraying at max capacity.

Really need try it to know.

My main gripped with Seraphim was that is costed 3hp which made me feel like I was falling behind on my rotation and damage.

Maybe 1HP won’t “irk” me as much, Idk.

1 Like