First Impression of Retribution Paladin Rework in Dragonflight 10.0.7 - Guide Writer Feeback

Posted 2023/02/22 at 12:24 PM by Bolas

Survivability

Divine Protection is now baseline, with a 1.30 CD (63s with Unbreakable Spirit).

Shield of Vengeance is still a talent that you'll practically always take, and now has a half duration GCD. It still has a 1.30 CD (63s with Unbreakable Spirit).

Aegis of Protection is also in the Ret tree and you'll usually have no problem taking it. It significantly buffs both active defensives.

Sanctified Plates in the Paladin tree, offering a staggeringly large amount of stamina and avoidance.

A plethora of new healing options:
Light's Celerity makes Flash of Light an instant cast, and buffs its healing. It puts it on a 6s cooldown, but there's no real situation you could ever spam Flash of Light to begin with anyway, if nothing else because your mana pool just isn't big enough to let you cast it more than 3 or 4 times in a row.

Guided Prayer casts a free Word of Glory once every minute when you drop to low health. It also benefits from Healing Hands.

Lightforged Blessing gives free AoE healing for every Divine Storm.

Crusader's Reprieve causes Crusader Strike to also heal you every hit.

Fading Light gives you an absorb shield based on the damage your generators do.

Divine ProtectionShield of VengeanceDivine ShieldSanctified PlatesMobilityHeroic LeapDivine SteedDivine ShieldJudgment of JusticeDivine SteedBlessing of FreedomUnbound FreedomRetribution Aura50% of their Health in a Single HitRetribution AuraAshes to AshesRetribution AuraRetribution AuraThis Cannot Occur More than Once Every 30 Sec

If the ICD is group wide, in groups with one Paladin, you'll have that Paladin start in Retribution Aura, proc the damage buff, and then swap to Devotion Aura. Once the ICD is up, they'll swap back to Retribution Aura, and repeat. They'll end up swapping Auras twice every 30s to maintain both the damage buff and the damage reduction.

If the ICD is Paladin specific, you could run 3 Paladins, and have them rotate their Auras to permanently maintain the 5% damage buff. This would at least require the Paladins to swap Auras in the first 10-20s of the fight, and probably more often if subsequent procs don't happen exactly on CD.

Retribution GameplayCrusading StrikesCrusader StrikeDivine StormFinal ReckoningAvenging WrathAvenging WrathFinal ReckoningAvenging WrathAvenging WrathZealot's ParagonAvenging WrathAvenging WrathNew TalentsRetribution Talents

All of the passive stat nodes in the Retribution tree like Teachings of the Light or Judge, Jury and Executioner now have an additional effect to them too, which is a nice bonus to make them a little less boring.

Holy Blade sorta feels like it just exists to soak up a talent point. I'd consider this a fundamental part of Blade of Justice as a spell, since every version of it we've ever had ended up generating 2 Holy Power, so it feels weird to need to pick it as one of your first talent points.

In the top third of the talent tree, there's only 9 talent nodes and 8 points to spend on them - that said, there are also 6 choice node talents among them, so you still do get to make a lot of choices here, just between two different options on a choice node rather than between two or three different talent paths. There's also two utility nodes here, which means you'll usually just pick one of them to take and then take every other talent in the section. I like the effects these talents provide, but I think most players will be reluctant to take more than one of them since it'll probably come at the cost of a decent amount of damage to do so.

Righteous Cause vs Art of War is a really cool way to let players decide the mechanic they want to have for Blade of Justice resets. Righteous Cause should probably also reset on Divine Storm casts though, or otherwise in any situation involving AoE you'd essentially be forced into always taking Art of War, assuming they're tuned to be comparable on single target.

Judgment of Justice is a pretty tame version of Long Arm of the Law, but I like that it's managed to sneak its way back into the talent tree in some form, since there's a lot of players that really love that effect.

Expurgation has had a redesign so that it now procs off every Blade of Justice cast rather than just crits. I liked having some talents that would alter your secondary stat preferences, but its position in the tree makes it seem like it's supposed to be a talent that you'll just take in most regular builds rather than a talent that you'd build around for Blade of Justice specifically, which makes sense. Currently if you use Blade of Justice on a target that already has an Expurgation debuff, the original one just gets completely overwritten - I'd like to see a mechanic similar to Soulscar instead where the remaining damage on an existing Expurgation dot gets added to any subsequent application instead, especially since Righteous Cause and Art of War can cause you to cast a lot of Blade of Justices in a small period.

Empyrean Legacy is still a talent I like a lot, but it still has the awkward incentive if you're using Avenging Wrath and Final Reckoning that you'll probably want to use Divine Storm to build Avenging Wrath stacks on single target, to then use the Empyrean Legacy proc after your Final Reckoning at 10 stacks. Hopefully without this might not be a damage gain to do anymore, but it's not very fun to have to hardcast your AoE spender on single target just to save the proc.

It makes sense to nerf Sanctify and Consecrated Blade when they were previously strong enough to even see use on single target, but I'm not sure it makes sense for them to still be in the talent tree generally when Consecration itself has already had its cooldown increased to 20s and all of the talents that make your generators cleave are likely to be stronger than these anyway. I'm definitely not a big Consecration fan, but these versions of these talents seem like they could just be something else a bit more interesting for Ret.

I like bringing back Inquisitor's Ire, an old Legendary from Legion that never really saw any use, but the % per stack and cap mean that at maximum stacks Divine Storm will only do 50% more damage, which isn't even enough to beat a Final Verdict or Justicar's Vengeance on single target.

Highlord's Wrath has an interesting concept, but currently you'll end up constantly overcapping buffs with Divine Resonance. I'd like to see either an increase in the stack cap, or some other mechanism that means you don't end up losing value from it when every spender you use will be buffed by Judgment anyway.

Putting Execution Sentence and Final Reckoning on a choice node together makes sense from the perspective of not wanting too many damage buffing modifiers to exist, but I'm not sure it'd be a really oppressive combination without , and there's a lot of players that really loved that playstyle from Shadowlands who would love to be able to use both at once.

Vanguard's Momentum currently provides all its damage bonus in just the first talent point, and the second point only gives you one extra charge of Hammer of Wrath. It should probably be tuned so that the second point provides a bit more benefit. I like that it emphasizes Hammer of Wrath's role during execute a bit more, since it always felt odd to have an execute ability as Ret that didn't significantly increase your overall execute damage.

A choice node between Final Verdict and Justicar's Vengeance is a cool idea, but I'd like it more if it was just a "do you want more range on your spender or a heal on your spender" choice rather than also picking between different base damage on each or a Hammer of Wrath reset effect too.

There's a few talents that seem like they'll probably be fairly undertuned, like Divine Hammer or Divine Auxiliary or Seething Flames, but since this is the first iteration of these abilities I'm not too worried about tuning still needing to be done.

Some talents don't really work at all together yet. If you take Crusading Strikes, Seal of the Crusader doesn't proc off your Crusader Strike auto attacks. If you take Blessed Hammer, Improved Crusader Strike doesn't give it an extra charge, Swift Justice doesn't reduce its cooldown, and Blades of Light doesn't make it deal Holystrike damage.

I'm really interested to see what happens with the talents that alter spell damage schools like Blades of Light and buff specific schools like Searing Light. These clearly aren't done yet, but it's design space that has seen minimal exploration other than one or two talents like Dark Brew, and I think there could be a lot of really interesting ways to specialize into Physical or Holy or Fire damage that could be really great if they're fully explored.

Paladin Talents

There's definitely some significant pathing improvements - for example, you now no longer have to take 2 ranks of Fist of Justice to get throughput increases. There's no major issues with throughput nodes being locked behind utility nodes anymore, although there are still a significant number of throughput nodes you'll want to take.

Unlike the Ret tree, most of the passive stat nodes are still just boring multi point passive nodes like Holy Aegis and Seal of Might. The one node that has an additional effect, Seal of Alacrity, still has the same passive bonus as another node already in the Ret tree, Teachings of the Light. I'd like to see more interesting effects added if we're going to want to spend 4-6 points on this style of damage node.

Punishment is a nice bonus for interrupting, and is a lot more reasonable than the free Templar's Verdict that it cast originally.

I'd really like to see real options for pressing your buttons to meaningfully offheal in the Paladin tree. Currently, most of the options are either passive benefits like Lightforged Blessing or Golden Path or Judgment of Light that won't help much if your group is taking heavy damage, or effects like Afterimage or that would probably be throughput increases for Holy, but aren't very helpful for a Ret trying to offheal in a pinch. Compared to options in other hybrid class trees like Ancestral Guidance or Vampiric Embrace or Nature's Vigil, there's nothing even close to comparably strong for Paladin.

Incandescence is a lot worse now that Consecration is on a longer cooldown, we don't get free procs as often, and we're less inclined to press it anyway.

A lot of the talents are effectively useless outside of the spec they seem to be primarily designed for - for example, Lightforged Blessing procs off Divine Storm when neither of the other Paladin specs actually have access to that ability, and Faith's Armor is an armor buff when that's a completely irrelevant effect for either Holy or Retribution.

You can still very comfortably take every capstone and lose almost nothing for doing so. Since the entire bottom third of the Paladin tree is essentially throughput, this means that every capstone is now basically a baseline passive damage bonus rather than something you'd ever pick or choose between.

Quickened Invocation is realistically never going to be used - taking it would desync Divine Toll from your other 60s/2min cooldowns, and losing Divine Resonance is way too high of a price anyway.

Similar to the choice between Final Verdict and Justicar's Vengeance, Seal of Order and Fading Light are very similar abilities, except one gives you a stronger throughput bonus while the other simply provides an absorb shield. It'd be a lot more interesting if the choice was more like between a flat damage reduction or an absorb or something similar instead of one being strictly better for throughput.

Is it a Good Rework?yesRetribution Aura

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Comments

Comment by Civil4794

i love feeback

Comment by Quaght

Great write up. So far my biggest problem is the same you wrote about Retribution Aura. However, I'll go a bit further and say that the way it's set up is to REQUIRE a ret pally, thus some other classes being shut out. I've never liked "bring the class not the player" because it has the effect of leaving players behind. If you're stuck in a class or spec you don't like, but can only get into a raid or dungeon if you choose that spec or class, the game isn't very fun.

Comment by rebound

As far as reworks go, having the guide writer say "I love everything but this one thing," is super encouraging!

Comment by WardenAC

Need to also talk about the new instrument of retribution passive giving wings when an ally dies. I don't want to benefit from my friends dying.

Comment by selkiesidhe

If Wings of Liberty could end with consecration... I'd die a happy nerd. I would bounce around trying to get that one great screenshot lol

Comment by roboscorcher

Regarding Retribution Aura:
- 100% agree that 50% in 1 hit is a bad condition. Maybe a smaller % would work, or counting damage over 1sec, or counting raidwide damage.
- For ICD, it seems like a simple fix. Only allow 1 Ret Aura per raid, and have the ICD timer restart whenever any paladin activates the Aura.

Comment by roboscorcher

Comment by schmilblick

Ret will be a monster in PvP, I'll come back to the game just for it while waiting the Enhancement Shaman rework (if there is one).

Comment by ArchieAngel

The Crusading Strikes can also be faster with certain talent tree implementation which makes auto attacks faster by 20%!

Comment by Kretyn

Wings of Liberty has not been implemented on the PTR yet

Comment by Rethum

“a longer Divine Steed that is no longer on the GCD”

It’s still currently on the GCD, I am hoping this is just a bug. I have reported it as such.

Currently you can press Steed and it won’t trigger a GCD. If you use any rotational ability however it still makes Steed non-usable until the GCD is over, which entirely negates the purpose of “removing it” from the GCD. We need to be able to press the ability in the middle of our rotation to actively avoid damage or else Steed mobility will always feel bad.

Comment by Sundercat

If you're going to compare ret to warriors in some aspects, I'm going to follow along with that regarding some of your other feedback. Before complaining about Holy Blade seemingly only existing to make you burn another talent point to make an ability perform the way it always did before, I'd like for you to direct your attention towards literally just the top third of the fury tree, where Improved Enrage, Improved Execute, and Improved Raging Blow all exist.

Comment by hashtagfred

Ret will be a monster in PvP, I'll come back to the game just for it while waiting the Enhancement Shaman rework (if there is one).

I know nothing of enhancement in pvp, but generally I don't see how enhancement needs any kind of rework over all. I've been loving and have heard few complaints.

Similar to enhance, I'm liking the increase in range for a lot of ret's abilities. While better movement options are great, I personally like the approach of being able to hit enemies from afar while remaining a melee spec

Comment by Jman703

Need to also talk about the new instrument of retribution passive giving wings when an ally dies. I don't want to benefit from my friends dying.

I feel like the fact that everyone who gets serious (myself included) min/maxing is what ruins it. From a thematic perspective, it seems like being enraged at seeing an ally fall and seeking vengeance is a pretty cool and badass thing...but then the realization that this can be done intentionally / strategically for gains is what makes it translate to bad gameplay.

Comment by Jman703

This sounds promising though. As someone who rolled Ret in TBC and was too dedicated (or too lazy) to play another spec - I'm excited to see how the changes continue to develop.

Comment by schmilblick

Ret will be a monster in PvP, I'll come back to the game just for it while waiting the Enhancement Shaman rework (if there is one).

I know nothing of enhancement in pvp, but generally I don't see how enhancement needs any kind of rework over all. I've been loving and have heard few complaints.

Enhance is pretty much worse than Ret in PvP in most aspects, crappy mobility, crappy survivability, clunky as hell and much more.

So with this rework, Ret will be even far ahead of Enhance in PvP.

Comment by ZeroEdgeir

Similar to enhance, I'm liking the increase in range for a lot of ret's abilities. While better movement options are great, I personally like the approach of being able to hit enemies from afar while remaining a melee spec

This is where it is silly on the PTR (in the best way possible).

With the right couple talents taken, you are able to maintain about 70-80% of your DPS from about 20 yards away. The only thing that won't reach is Auto Attack and Crusader Strike. And even those can at least sit at 8 yards.

We have a bigger working area to melee in, than Hunters used to have for a ranged dead zone back in the day.

Comment by EonDrache

Need to also talk about the new instrument of retribution passive giving wings when an ally dies. I don't want to benefit from my friends dying.

This isn't new. it has been a mechanic for Retribution Aura since Legion's prepatch.

Comment by pawpurr

This mostly matches my analysis. Good work. I think there's a lot of discussion around Crusading Strikes, whether the talent tree should bend to support it's design or if it needs redesign itself. Personally I think it's fine. If you do other builds without that talent, you still have too much holy power and resources. And that's without buffs, imagine how that would feel in a raid with everything up, and even during heroism.

The elephant in the room is actually everyone's favorite talent, Crusade. It probably can't stay at 30% haste and 30% damage if the talent tree is going to include this many cooldown reductions, extra charges and reset procs. Something's gotta go, and IMO, It shouldn't be any of the new CS talents, because for once, we actually like having the ability (whether we press it or it's pressing itself).

Comment by MarshallDTeach

It'd be interesting to see Inquisition return as a talent as well now that Seraphim is gone.

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