It wasn’t really good then either, all it was is a damage buff that inflicted damage back on the ret. Such things can just be baked into ability damage. So unless they affect allies too or such, they’re just a pointless extra button to press. I mean why have say Crusader Strike do its damge and then extra from the seal. When Crusader Strike could just flat out hit that hard in the first place, without having an extra button to buff it.
Ret was a full spec in BC in the latter half, if the guild wasn’t stupid. This was mainly because of CS refreshing the other paladin judgements, almost every guild had a prot and holy paladin so having light and wisdom on the buff the whole fight was amazing. If they do a Classic BC server you’ll see A LOT of raiding ret paladins.
Cata ret was just complete trash. 3 major CD’s, outside of them a baby flinging a wet diaper would do more damage. The whole rotation was CS-Filler until you hit 3 then you’d TV. By the time WoD came around blizzard had done A LOT to fix the spec, we were down to one major cooldown instead of three and inquisition had been removed.
The reason CS has a 6 second cd was because they gave it two charges. That’s the only reason, in WoD Judgement gave HP and in Legion it didn’t so the spec needed another generator and instead they just gave CS another charge. They should just remove the CD at this point.
The Legion beta forums had over 1,000 pages of people complaining about all the changes to ret and they went through with it anyway. Which is why the spec saw constant changes throughout Legion and even more with BfA. It really feels like blizzard doesn’t have a clue what to do with the spec. We had a fun spec in Wrath that people likes and only had a few problems, blizzard destroyed what we were and then took that whole idea and gave it to demon hunters.
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Using that logic why have more then one ability? You could just average out the damage of all your abilities and just hit one button over and over. Seals are a hot topic, some love them some hate them. They did offer very interesting opportunities but all of them could have just been built baseline into the spec but by keeping them as something you switch between it becomes more interesting. Example: Classic had Seal of Light and Wisdom that gave back mana and life on hit, well why not just back it into auto attack? Because the CHOICE to use it or not is more interesting then just having the passive heal 100% of the time.
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That’s not even close, Seals don’t do any damage on their own, they just add another button to add/buff the damage of abilities that actually do damage. Your just being pointless hyperbolic.
Seal of Wisdom is pointless, mana isn’t an issue. Seal of Light is just the same as if it was a passive heal. WoG and such can just heal for more, rather than an extra button buff that needs melee range work. Given ret isn’t know for its gap closing ability, I would rather a stronger instant heal than more button bloat needing melee to heal.
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Did you read my post before the quoted it I said
Classic, when mana mattered.
My point still stands. You think seals are crap because they just boosted damage, again then so is Avenging Wrath. The point is you can always bake things in to make them passive but that takes away still and thought-provoking gameplay.
I personally liked the “stance” seals that lasted up until WoD. It was a nice little additional way to react to combat, switching from ST to AoE seal to PvP slow seal.
What happened I believe is that they wanted to step away from homogenization and started coming up with “niches” for various specs. For ret they came up with a slow heavy hitting melee “juggernaut” niche which of course was very different from more mid range WoD playstyle. I was one of the many who hated the change. It felt so heavy handed.
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And it can stay in the past.
Wings has a Cd and a limited duration, it also changes up the rotation with Hammer of Wrath. So you have to think about when and where you use it, and how to maximize it.
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oh you almost made me forget how great it was in MoP/WoD when during wings it was alternating between some other ability and HoW.
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Whirlwind is in no way meaty. It’s actually completely terrible and useless on its own.
For Fury Whirlwind is only good cause it spreads single target damage.
For Arms it’s only useful as a rage dump if you talent into the slam combo.
Divine Storm is hands down better than Whirlwind for damage. I’ll give you that Whirlwind sounds nice and has a good animation.
Divine Steed? LaotL, Emancipate, Final Verdict gone?? Just to name a few. Legion was the beginning of an unparalleled suffering.
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TV is FV since Legion, it does holy damage… Emancipate is so so, if you are constantly getting rooted or slowed you are just spamming it and not doing damage anyway. Long Arm, I guess that’s a loss but I mean it’s another so so thing, can’t judge around pillars.
Range? Interaction with Divine Storm??
I forgot to mention Clemency, which is a holy pvp talent now. Uh, and did I forget to mention the loss of Blessing of Sacrifice?
Sorry, despite some rotational improvements (which were taken again in BfA) Legion ret is inferior to MoP or WoD ret in any shape or form.
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“Interaction” with DS, lol. Final Verdict is crap and nothing special. Legion had DS actually move and act like a storm, and TV echo damage. All you are mentioning is a bunch of mediocre movement abilities that barely account for anything. You’re still gonna get kited by that frost mage, while he steals your wings and laughs at you, WoD lol what a joke expansion. At least with Steed you can catch people dancing around pillars.
The point of the thread is making a version of ret among all the iteration we’ve been through. But from a hybrid standpoint cataclysm was the strongest, its offhealing value was amazing. That’s why I want to base with cata due to all the healing multiplier to wog.
Also, you’re surely forgetting divine purpose was proccing for absurdly godly amount most of the time, easily being 8-9 procs in a row which made the spec fluid. But of course the 2pieces bonus from Dragon Soul made the spec overall way more enjoyable and trully fluid with divine purpose on top. So I do agree with you that for most of the expansion holy power generation was pretty clunky, that’s why i’m adding the design philosophy of mop adding the extra 2 holy power cap, and the way that cs, how, judgement and exo also generated a holy power to make “my version” of ret more fluid to play.
Also having multiple major cooldown isnt bad at all. In mythic+ right now we would be staggering cooldowns to have a major cd ready every minute for aoe packs. It was also why it was really good in pvp during, we didnt only have wings for burst, we also had zealotry or holy avenger in mop.
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Wings couldn’t be spellstolen in WoD. In Legion not only mages could kite ret, practically everything could. In WoD you could at least stay mobile with Emancipate and with Pursuit of Justice and Final Verdict you could maintain a higher up time.
If you got pillar humped in WoD, it was probably because you typically took Long Arm. With Pursuit of Justice I could and would do the pillar humping. Also WoD had a very similar talent to Divine Steed, Speed of light.
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There is objectively nothing that can be said to even insinuate that the pony is better for movement than Long Arm/Emancipate. Nothing, Legion ret was awful, dumb things like auto trinket and auto bubble to make up for the wheelchair is just brain dead design.
A mix between cata defensives/utilities and wod dmg system would probably be the best. And yes, inquitition but other specs should also have to manage things like slice and dice.
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wrath and wod were nice. holy power sucks. i want exorcism and old divine storm animation too.
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That works if ALL you do is mythic+. In PvP, Raiding and open world content it’s a massive negative. In all major forms of content, aside from mythic+ you always want to pop all your CD’s at once as that will give FAR more damage then staggering them. Mythic+ is different because you’re dealing with many trash pulls of large mobs and then a boss right after. One of the few time multiple CD’s is nice.
We could go on forever how set bonus’ worked to make a spec a lot better. MoP’s Divine Storm proc set bonus was so good it was made baseline for WoD. Both of WoD set bonus’s were amazing, BRF set bonus let us just spam finishers over and over and it felt like playing a holy fury warrior. HFC’s set bonus let use have 3 charges of AW giving us a lot of choice of CD’s usage.
The one thing I think is clear is blizzard doesn’t have a clue what to do with the spec. They want us to be pure melee but we don’t have the mobility of other pure melee. We have self healing but we have to stop to use it unlike other classes it’s passive or instant. Ret’s a strange spec and I’m expecting another rework in shadowlands or after but I have no idea wtf they’re going to do with it.
Not necessarily in all aspects of pvp. It just opens you up to being CC’d for its duration or you opponent popping defensives. It also makes you incredibly predictable and thus easier to fight and counter.
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In some aspects in PvP I can agree. If you have an instant win button like 3 major cooldown you create that opening. But I will admit that depending on your comp staggering them might be useful at tims.
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