What exactly is Crusader Strike?

Relearning Wow as a returning player from 2004 - 2008, 2018 - 2019. Playing Pally and utilizing the Ret spec for solo questing/leveling. Currently lvl 70.

Reading some various talents that involve or effect “Crusader Strike”. So I look at my hotbars and spell book for “Crusader Strike”. Nothing to be found.

In the Spellbook/Paladin I do see: “Crusading Strikes” which according to the text “now replaces your auto attack”. That I understand.

However, in the Spellbook/Retribution section it says:

Improved Crusader Strikes”: (Passive) Crusader Strike now has 2 charges

Two charges?? Of WHAT?? It’s a passive and an auto attack.

What am I missing?

Crusader Strike is an active ability, because of a talent you are taking the active ability is now a passive that replaces your auto attacks with the previously active ability cast. This allows your autos to hit a little harder but builds holy power passively when you auto attack.

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Okay great. Thanks for the reply.

I suppose that when we train the talent(…?.. not sure, I’m so overwhelmed with information at this point) that turns Crusader Strike into our auto attack, Blizz didn’t bother to update the tool tip for Improved Crusader Strikes because it still says “has 2 charges”, which is what confused the hell out of me.

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Yeah, it’s as Malciks says.
Crusader Strike is an ability common to all Paladin specs.

At some level (I don’t know which), Retribution spec gets a passive trait called Improved Crusader Strike, which gives the ability two charges (Holy only ever gets one charge, except when using Avenging Crusader; Protection only gets one charge, but all Protection Paladins talent into another ability that replaces Crusader Strike entirely with one of two new abilities)

Additionally, midway down their talent tree, Retribution Paladins can select a choice node to get either “Crusading Strikes” (which removes Crusader Strike from their bar, and improves their auto-attack damage, while allowing every other auto-attack to generate Holy Power) or “Templar Strikes” (which retains the two charges of Crusader Strike, but makes the second one do more damage, and changes their damage type to Radiant instead of Physical)

There’s no such thing as “the ret spec for x”. You imported a recommended talent build off of wowhead or icyveins or something and didn’t actually look at the completely new talent tree, you just jumped into smashing things.

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Kaelas… I started a new character and did the boost to 70. The “ret spec” that Blizzard has preloaded is what I was referring to. In fact, the reason why I’m asking is specifically because I “actually looked at the completely new talent tree” and didn’t just “jump into smashing things”.

Out of curiosity, is it VERBOTEN or something to try out other specs via the method you described? Why would Blizz have the mechanics in place if it’s a bad thing?

I have to wonder why you would hop into a Class discussion thread just to denigrate, belittle and harass others that are asking questions about their Class. Toxicity for toxicity sakes I suppose.

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Yeah unfortunately you see a lot of people in the forums who seem to go looking for something someone is saying/doing that they can pounce on. Yes blizz gives you that crusading strikes talent as a default if you boost. I personally prefer Templar strikes, but I think I’m in the minority. I don’t like the downtime in my rotation without TS, and the holy power generation doesn’t seem very good. The slight increase in auto attack damage isn’t worth it to me

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For one, HP generation isn’t even close between TS and CSAA.

TS has 2 HP on A 9sec CD, CSAA just keeps going regardless.

Secondly, it’s not just a slight increase in AA damage, its a significant increase because it now means your AA scales with mastery through blade of light, AoW can proc from Blessed champion on AoE.

All that being said, CSAA should probably go along with radiant glory.

It’s a slight. You lose AA damage to replace it with cs damage. The mastery scaling is obsolete once you realize you lose an active skill that you used on cd anyways that scales with mastery.

Without mastery scaling the increase is equal to heart of crusaders AA boast.

You take csaa for 3 reasons

To reduce gcd
Automatic hp generation
Get more art of war procs by making AA AoE.

Vanilla CS was a filler not something you pressed on CD other than to keep 1 charge on CD.

That essentially what I said.

And CSAA generates more HP than TS.

You can sim it, its not close.

Yes and no, vanilla was pressed when you can, vanilla paladin only gotten one hp per skill use, as such everything was on a piority system with finishers being on top, then judgement with art of war following that.

Nothing was filler really due to need of hp.

You said csaa did more damage along with higher hp generation. I stated the hp regen is automatic (which is not really a disagreement with that part) but disagreed that it did more damage then ts + AA weapon damage, and that mastery scaling is obsolete when taking into account that the same scaling applies to TS.

That’s what I said…

All the talent combined, TS vs CSAA ain’t close depending on how you interpret %.

For some just 1% is huge for others 5% ain’t that big, go figure…

In ST, CSAA pulls 10% ahead of TS for me with a M+ build.
15% in 5 targets…

Suggesting this is just a “minor” difference is just being grossly misinformed.